Seriously, 'mediocre' and 'bland' in relation to something like comedy are inherently going to be value judgements. If I were to say that it was funny, fresh, and clever, I'd also be stating an opinion.
However, try watching the show (or any show for that matter) with the sound off and closed captioning on. Without the laughtrack telling you when something is funny, I'd warrant that most people find the 'Friends' dialogue banal and forced.
From a medical and oncological perspective, this is very interesting stuff.
From a DHS/security/evil overlord angle, it's absolutely nothing at all.
The guy was screened routinely. He failed the screening for an extraordinary reason, and was kept for four measly hours, until they could parse and process the exception.
That's it. They didn't strip-search him, they didn't tase him, they didn't abuse him or violate his rights. They came across an exception, dealt with it, and moved on.
Or would you rather spend all day making up SHOCKING headlines for articles like, "Police do their job. Bring in suspect for questioning, and then release him after innocence proven."
Ah yes. The most resolutely mediocre and unentertaining show on television.
There are shows that were less funny by means of offense or tasteless, but I don't know if anything has managed to surpass it in terms of utterly bland, unfunny gags propped up by excessive laugh track use.
I remember when Wired first came out, it was a "modern" magazine layout (i.e. scattered, glossy, and with articles indistinguishable from the ads interspersed throughout). I tried to read it a few times, and found that the articles were fluffy, hype-riddled garbage.
Strangely (or not), it survived--stranger still, some of the writers got quite good and occasionally insightful. Still a pain to read in print, but their website makes it bearable.
This article, is just like the good ol' days--hype-riddled garbage. Amongst huge numbers of other fallacies, he conveniently forgets the fact that the social(ist) media are first and foremost, capitalist advertising platforms.
Hmm. I think we agree, but are approaching the issue from different angles.
I have no problems with fun, pointless, fluffy music. I have a fair bit of it in my collection at home, and put it on the playlist regularly. I don't really draw a line between 'fun/popular' music and 'artistic' music. I do, however, draw a line between music written as music vs. music generated as marketing. Mostly it's a matter of intent (and yes, ability) for me. Music is written for the want of writing, performing, and reaching out to people; and if that means a song that gets people up DANCING, that's fine. It's when people sit in an office, generate a song via a formula, based on target radio demographics and sales numbers; then assign star status to fame-seekers who can't sing (because you can always fix it up with autotune), THAT'S what I'd like to see die.
Popularity should be about what people want to hear (or see, or read), not what they're told to enjoy. The problem with the system at present is that the charts and radio exposure are so tightly controlled by the marketing agencies and labels that good musicians--either populist or serious--are being marginalised and until recently have been blocked from accessing much of the market that would appreciate them.
Lemme give you some concrete examples. First, assume that the 'target audience' here is the (very broad) 15-35 year old group which actively listens to popular radio (either pop, country, rap, classic rock, or the like). OK, ready? Here we go...
Maybe one person in 50 (or even 500) might listen to and enjoy the Fiery Furnaces if exposed to them. How many are exposed to them now via the existing commercial media structure? Roughly zero. They get zero airplay, outside of public and campus radio.
The B-52s. Fun, airheaded, silly summer pop. I will stand here and claim that if they were a new band now, they'd never get the airplay they did when they started--because they weren't packaged by the industry. There are an endless number of bands out there that are just plain ol' fun (my brother's country band is one of 'em), but can't get airplay because of the mechanisms of the industry.
Conversely, you have "musicians" that aren't musicians at all--they can't write, they can't play, and they can't sing--either lipsyncing (a la Britney Spears), or relying entirely on autotune (nearly EVERYONE - let's pick on Kelly Clarkson for the sake of argument), and performing a song written as a marketing tool (sometimes simply album sales, but often other products or backers--"Hannah Montana" as a musician? She's a Disney Character folks!) Oh yes, and false anger for the sake of controversy and...sales. (Pretty much the entire rap industry.)
The music we listen to doesn't all have to be serious, artistic, complex stuff, but it should be written for musicans and fans to enjoy--and the industry prevents that as much as possible.
I know a lot of musicians. None of them are after fame and success, at least where success = huge sales, tons of money, etc..
People after MTV and commercial radio airplay are not what I would call musicians or artists. Some people who end up on those venues are genuine artists, but invariably that's not their goal--it just happened.
Ultimately, talent, skill, and quality aren't vectors to fame, so if the 'fame' model dies horribly, I don't think anyone will be upset. Well, consumers and artists won't be upset at least. Businesses and shills might be upset that their free ride is over.
I don't know this for sure, but I can't imagine that Oracle bought Sun for the sake of acquiring MySQL. In fact, the only thing they really might be interested in it for is to destroy it.
Sure, they could nurture it along, make it the entry-level to REAL (i.e. Oracle) databases, but that's expensive, uncertain, and seldom profitable in the long run. Crushing it in-house, encouraging division and fractionation in the community, and letting it become another piece of roadkill is easier and more effective.
HOWEVER, I doubt they'll bother. MySQL doesn't compete with Oracle, and it's not good enough (no, really--it's not) to foster from their commercial point of view. Realistically, they'll let it sit there, doing its thing, while they concentrate on what they bought Sun for: Vertical integration, bundled solutions, and a complementary server line and OS for their software.
Thinking that Oracle CARES much about MySQL is almost certainly a conceit.
I've got to take exception to one of your comments.
"Unfortunately the financial crisis hit, Oracle swooped and it's all too late."
Well, no. The financial crisis had landed, established roots, and was starting to smell bad at Sun YEARS before the global slowdown. Take a look at Sun's stock price over the last five years, and you'll see that they've been declining when everyone else was still making money.
Oracle's "swooping in" is something that Schwartz has been begging for for a while. Sun has (had?) enough cash ON-HAND to take the company private again, but they absolutely refused to do so. That is the sign of someone who is trying to be bought, and no matter how hard they deny it, I suspect (very strongly!) that the deal with Oracle was in the works for several months. Also, the IBM thing was probably a smoke-screen.
At this point, anything JS says is even less believable than before, because he could instantly be pulled out of that role (yay!). However, at his very best, he was as trustworthy as a racehorse with ADD.
Everything you said. Except that Sun still has a few really great engineers who haven't jumped ship yet. (Note the words "few" and "yet" in that sentence.)
Pity that Oracle will either keep Jonathan on, or given him a severance package. He deserves to be kicked to the curb with a mouthful of broken teeth.
Here's a general comment: Applications should drive the OS decision, not the other way around. Find the software you want to use--play with it, work with it, and then if you have a choice, look into the OS.
Decades ago, someone mentioned that an OS is kinda like underwear. It should be there, it should provide support, but only the fashion-obsessed really spend much time thinking about it.
"Archival" is a grey area, as was pointed out the other day. Using hard drives in a docking station as an evolution of tape cartridges and drives is probably not archival in the same sense as streaming mag tape, but if done in the same manner (i.e. proper disk rotation and tracking, verification, etc.) can be treated as such.
But I've been shouting "NO! RAID isn't backup! Mirroring isn't backup! Online syncing isn't backup! OFFLINE BACKUP is backup!" for so long that my throat is hoarse from it. People who don't get it probably will never get it.
My wife just bought a Dell laptop. For her, as for many people (women AND men!), the computer is a tool--she wants something powerful enough for professional AutoCAD work and teaching, and beyond that, aesthetics are important. (both visual and functional).
Soooooo, she asked me "what do I need to know? What do I need to care about? Why are you telling me to buy a smaller hard drive for the same money? (7200RPM vs. 5400). These CPUs are the same speed--why is this one more expensive?"
In other words, she did her homework. not like a man, not like a woman, but instead like a consumer, with specific needs.
Gender-based marketing should be turfed. The answer to "guy-specific" shopping isn't to try and invent "girl-specific" stuff, it's to eliminate the gender bias altogether. Colours? Sure, why not? Sell it in pink, sell it in blue, sell it in green and orange and black and silver and white. Just don't sell it in pink "for the ladies" and blue "for MANLY computing!".
Ah well. Proof that marketers are usually as stupid as they are evil.
OK, LOTS of strange posts from people who claim to have read the article but only see that it's bad code, not actually broken.
Read it again. It's broken from a legal liability and trustworthiness standpoint. It's broken from a precision standpoint. It's broken from an algorithm standpoint. It is not trusworthy, precise, accurate, or correct.
"It is clear that, as submitted, the Alcotest software would not pass development standards and testing for the U.S. Government or Military. It would fail software standards for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Federal Drug Administration (FDA), as well as commercial standards used in devices for public safety. This means the Alcotest would not be considered for military applications such as analyzing breath alcohol for fighter pilots. If the FAA imposed mandatory alcohol testing for all commercial pilots, the Alcotest would be rejected based upon the FAA safety and software standards."
Nobody in the government or military would be allowed to trust this, if it weren't already in use.
"Results Limited to Small, Discrete Values"
Sixteen values is all it displays! It throws away almost all of the precision of the 12-bit ADC, and reduces it to 4 bits! This is NOT precise enough!
"Catastrophic Error Detection Is Disabled" "Diagnostics Adjust/Substitute Data Readings" "Range Limits Are Substituted for Incorrect Average Measurements" "The software design detects measurement errors, but ignores these errors unless they occur a consecutive total number of times."
It's not correct. It's not accurate. It's not good enough. The odds are VERY good that some people over the limit have gotten off lucky, and also that some people below the limit now have criminal records.
The key is adoption. You know that SOMETHING could POSSIBLY happen at any time, but in our case, we got a phone call one day, and 30 hours later we were parents of a newborn.
OK, when Thief first came out, I played the demo and loved it, but it was so painfully clunky on my old PC that I didn't buy it at the time.
Thief 2 came out, and I had the same ancient PC.
By the time Thief 3 was released, I had a shiny new computer, and immediately bought the game. It was just what I was hoping for. Stealthy, sneaky, scary, and (relatively) realistic. I played beginning to end, then went back and replayed some of my favorite bits. Being able to walk through the streets of the city gave it a much more live feel than just going mission-to-mission.
Eventually, I went back and started on Thief 2. It was good too. Different--different controls, different movement, and different tools, but still very good. I didn't get as far into it because of other reasons (becoming a dad, rather suddenly) but I never understood the hatred for Thief 3. It really was a good game!
You have to ask yourself why you would consider going for a master's degree.
Faster career advancement? Or different opportunities? A Master's may get you to places that you can't get without it (and a PhD definitely can), but do you want to go to those places? If so, it's a great thing. Research tends heavily towards MSc and PhD types.
If you're planning on being a 'normal' tech geek (developer, sysadmin, web coder, etc. etc.), then the work experience is probably far more valuable. In fact, I think that most computing jobs would be better met by a technologist diploma rather than a computing degree.
It's been a while since I had to deal with PGP keys and the like, and things have multiplied since then. Is there a simple explanation for the status/compatability/equivalency of...
It always amazes me how people with severe allergies don't understand allergies.
Soy isn't an allergen, because soy isn't a product. Something in soy (probably a handful of things in fact) is an allergen. Doing a real root cause allergy test isn't practical (i.e. finding out which molecule is the allergen), which is why sensitivity tests are generally restricted to 'a food'.
Now that's one thing--and I assume you've had proper allergy tests, rather than relying on just the elimination diet. (If not, please do!) The other thing is the assumption that a soy-based toner will still have the allergen intact, or at least in a functional state. After polymerising, extracting, and generally messing with soy oil, I'd be more than a little surprised if there was anything left that could bind to the allergen receptor.
Mind you, if you don't bother with any allergen tests and just assume that the soy toner is going to affect your allergies, then you're almost certain to be right. Humans are infinitely good as convincing themselves of whatever they want, and manufacturing circumstantial evidence to back it up.
Nope. Tradition dictates that the IBM geeks who are friends with shipping and receiving there will get a chance to grab some of these for home. The rest will get crushed.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, thanks for that bit of insight!
Seriously, 'mediocre' and 'bland' in relation to something like comedy are inherently going to be value judgements. If I were to say that it was funny, fresh, and clever, I'd also be stating an opinion.
However, try watching the show (or any show for that matter) with the sound off and closed captioning on. Without the laughtrack telling you when something is funny, I'd warrant that most people find the 'Friends' dialogue banal and forced.
From a medical and oncological perspective, this is very interesting stuff.
From a DHS/security/evil overlord angle, it's absolutely nothing at all.
The guy was screened routinely. He failed the screening for an extraordinary reason, and was kept for four measly hours, until they could parse and process the exception.
That's it. They didn't strip-search him, they didn't tase him, they didn't abuse him or violate his rights. They came across an exception, dealt with it, and moved on.
Or would you rather spend all day making up SHOCKING headlines for articles like, "Police do their job. Bring in suspect for questioning, and then release him after innocence proven."
"...to spare with their hardcore fan base the inhabits the online forums."
I hope he worded it better than you. In all honestly, I have no idea what you're trying to say here!
Ah yes. The most resolutely mediocre and unentertaining show on television.
There are shows that were less funny by means of offense or tasteless, but I don't know if anything has managed to surpass it in terms of utterly bland, unfunny gags propped up by excessive laugh track use.
Hated that show with a passion.
Wow, it feels like flashback in here!
I remember when Wired first came out, it was a "modern" magazine layout (i.e. scattered, glossy, and with articles indistinguishable from the ads interspersed throughout). I tried to read it a few times, and found that the articles were fluffy, hype-riddled garbage.
Strangely (or not), it survived--stranger still, some of the writers got quite good and occasionally insightful. Still a pain to read in print, but their website makes it bearable.
This article, is just like the good ol' days--hype-riddled garbage. Amongst huge numbers of other fallacies, he conveniently forgets the fact that the social(ist) media are first and foremost, capitalist advertising platforms.
Thank you Wired, for reminding us of your roots.
"...various amounts of no clothing."
That made me laugh. Thank you.
Hmm. I think we agree, but are approaching the issue from different angles.
I have no problems with fun, pointless, fluffy music. I have a fair bit of it in my collection at home, and put it on the playlist regularly. I don't really draw a line between 'fun/popular' music and 'artistic' music. I do, however, draw a line between music written as music vs. music generated as marketing. Mostly it's a matter of intent (and yes, ability) for me. Music is written for the want of writing, performing, and reaching out to people; and if that means a song that gets people up DANCING, that's fine. It's when people sit in an office, generate a song via a formula, based on target radio demographics and sales numbers; then assign star status to fame-seekers who can't sing (because you can always fix it up with autotune), THAT'S what I'd like to see die.
Popularity should be about what people want to hear (or see, or read), not what they're told to enjoy. The problem with the system at present is that the charts and radio exposure are so tightly controlled by the marketing agencies and labels that good musicians--either populist or serious--are being marginalised and until recently have been blocked from accessing much of the market that would appreciate them.
Lemme give you some concrete examples. First, assume that the 'target audience' here is the (very broad) 15-35 year old group which actively listens to popular radio (either pop, country, rap, classic rock, or the like). OK, ready? Here we go...
Maybe one person in 50 (or even 500) might listen to and enjoy the Fiery Furnaces if exposed to them. How many are exposed to them now via the existing commercial media structure? Roughly zero. They get zero airplay, outside of public and campus radio.
The B-52s. Fun, airheaded, silly summer pop. I will stand here and claim that if they were a new band now, they'd never get the airplay they did when they started--because they weren't packaged by the industry. There are an endless number of bands out there that are just plain ol' fun (my brother's country band is one of 'em), but can't get airplay because of the mechanisms of the industry.
Conversely, you have "musicians" that aren't musicians at all--they can't write, they can't play, and they can't sing--either lipsyncing (a la Britney Spears), or relying entirely on autotune (nearly EVERYONE - let's pick on Kelly Clarkson for the sake of argument), and performing a song written as a marketing tool (sometimes simply album sales, but often other products or backers--"Hannah Montana" as a musician? She's a Disney Character folks!) Oh yes, and false anger for the sake of controversy and...sales. (Pretty much the entire rap industry.)
The music we listen to doesn't all have to be serious, artistic, complex stuff, but it should be written for musicans and fans to enjoy--and the industry prevents that as much as possible.
I know a lot of musicians. None of them are after fame and success, at least where success = huge sales, tons of money, etc..
People after MTV and commercial radio airplay are not what I would call musicians or artists. Some people who end up on those venues are genuine artists, but invariably that's not their goal--it just happened.
Ultimately, talent, skill, and quality aren't vectors to fame, so if the 'fame' model dies horribly, I don't think anyone will be upset. Well, consumers and artists won't be upset at least. Businesses and shills might be upset that their free ride is over.
I don't know this for sure, but I can't imagine that Oracle bought Sun for the sake of acquiring MySQL. In fact, the only thing they really might be interested in it for is to destroy it.
Sure, they could nurture it along, make it the entry-level to REAL (i.e. Oracle) databases, but that's expensive, uncertain, and seldom profitable in the long run. Crushing it in-house, encouraging division and fractionation in the community, and letting it become another piece of roadkill is easier and more effective.
HOWEVER, I doubt they'll bother. MySQL doesn't compete with Oracle, and it's not good enough (no, really--it's not) to foster from their commercial point of view. Realistically, they'll let it sit there, doing its thing, while they concentrate on what they bought Sun for: Vertical integration, bundled solutions, and a complementary server line and OS for their software.
Thinking that Oracle CARES much about MySQL is almost certainly a conceit.
I've got to take exception to one of your comments.
"Unfortunately the financial crisis hit, Oracle swooped and it's all too late."
Well, no. The financial crisis had landed, established roots, and was starting to smell bad at Sun YEARS before the global slowdown. Take a look at Sun's stock price over the last five years, and you'll see that they've been declining when everyone else was still making money.
Oracle's "swooping in" is something that Schwartz has been begging for for a while. Sun has (had?) enough cash ON-HAND to take the company private again, but they absolutely refused to do so. That is the sign of someone who is trying to be bought, and no matter how hard they deny it, I suspect (very strongly!) that the deal with Oracle was in the works for several months. Also, the IBM thing was probably a smoke-screen.
At this point, anything JS says is even less believable than before, because he could instantly be pulled out of that role (yay!). However, at his very best, he was as trustworthy as a racehorse with ADD.
Um...yeah.
Everything you said. Except that Sun still has a few really great engineers who haven't jumped ship yet. (Note the words "few" and "yet" in that sentence.)
Pity that Oracle will either keep Jonathan on, or given him a severance package. He deserves to be kicked to the curb with a mouthful of broken teeth.
Here's a general comment: Applications should drive the OS decision, not the other way around. Find the software you want to use--play with it, work with it, and then if you have a choice, look into the OS.
Decades ago, someone mentioned that an OS is kinda like underwear. It should be there, it should provide support, but only the fashion-obsessed really spend much time thinking about it.
Blah blah blah, retrosemantics.
I bet you use kibibytes too.
"Archival" is a grey area, as was pointed out the other day. Using hard drives in a docking station as an evolution of tape cartridges and drives is probably not archival in the same sense as streaming mag tape, but if done in the same manner (i.e. proper disk rotation and tracking, verification, etc.) can be treated as such.
But I've been shouting "NO! RAID isn't backup! Mirroring isn't backup! Online syncing isn't backup! OFFLINE BACKUP is backup!" for so long that my throat is hoarse from it. People who don't get it probably will never get it.
My wife just bought a Dell laptop. For her, as for many people (women AND men!), the computer is a tool--she wants something powerful enough for professional AutoCAD work and teaching, and beyond that, aesthetics are important. (both visual and functional).
Soooooo, she asked me "what do I need to know? What do I need to care about? Why are you telling me to buy a smaller hard drive for the same money? (7200RPM vs. 5400). These CPUs are the same speed--why is this one more expensive?"
In other words, she did her homework. not like a man, not like a woman, but instead like a consumer, with specific needs.
Gender-based marketing should be turfed. The answer to "guy-specific" shopping isn't to try and invent "girl-specific" stuff, it's to eliminate the gender bias altogether. Colours? Sure, why not? Sell it in pink, sell it in blue, sell it in green and orange and black and silver and white. Just don't sell it in pink "for the ladies" and blue "for MANLY computing!".
Ah well. Proof that marketers are usually as stupid as they are evil.
OK, LOTS of strange posts from people who claim to have read the article but only see that it's bad code, not actually broken.
Read it again. It's broken from a legal liability and trustworthiness standpoint. It's broken from a precision standpoint. It's broken from an algorithm standpoint. It is not trusworthy, precise, accurate, or correct.
"It is clear that, as submitted, the Alcotest software would not pass development standards and testing for the U.S. Government or Military. It would fail software standards for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Federal Drug Administration (FDA), as well as commercial standards used in devices for public safety. This means the Alcotest would not be considered for military applications such as analyzing breath alcohol for fighter pilots. If the FAA imposed mandatory alcohol testing for all commercial pilots, the Alcotest would be rejected based upon the FAA safety and software standards."
Nobody in the government or military would be allowed to trust this, if it weren't already in use.
"Results Limited to Small, Discrete Values"
Sixteen values is all it displays! It throws away almost all of the precision of the 12-bit ADC, and reduces it to 4 bits! This is NOT precise enough!
"Catastrophic Error Detection Is Disabled"
"Diagnostics Adjust/Substitute Data Readings"
"Range Limits Are Substituted for Incorrect Average Measurements"
"The software design detects measurement errors, but ignores these errors unless they occur a consecutive total number of times."
It's not correct. It's not accurate. It's not good enough. The odds are VERY good that some people over the limit have gotten off lucky, and also that some people below the limit now have criminal records.
I can only assume that 'artificial' ethics are in opposition to 'natural' ethics.
But is there such a thing?
Is there anything about ethical behaviour that is natural, innate, or predetermined in humans, or any other animal for that matter?
Seems like the idea of artificial ethics involves figuring out what we've artificially defined as ethics within society, and reducing them to code.
I'll answer that because, well...it's fun!
The key is adoption. You know that SOMETHING could POSSIBLY happen at any time, but in our case, we got a phone call one day, and 30 hours later we were parents of a newborn.
So yeah--suddenly.
OK, when Thief first came out, I played the demo and loved it, but it was so painfully clunky on my old PC that I didn't buy it at the time.
Thief 2 came out, and I had the same ancient PC.
By the time Thief 3 was released, I had a shiny new computer, and immediately bought the game. It was just what I was hoping for. Stealthy, sneaky, scary, and (relatively) realistic. I played beginning to end, then went back and replayed some of my favorite bits. Being able to walk through the streets of the city gave it a much more live feel than just going mission-to-mission.
Eventually, I went back and started on Thief 2. It was good too. Different--different controls, different movement, and different tools, but still very good. I didn't get as far into it because of other reasons (becoming a dad, rather suddenly) but I never understood the hatred for Thief 3. It really was a good game!
Seriously, it's not a review at all--it's an op/ed piece, and a badly written one at that.
How about reviewing the book as given, and leaving your attitude for your OWN book?
Couple days later here, but thanks! It's just what I needed.
You have to ask yourself why you would consider going for a master's degree.
Faster career advancement? Or different opportunities? A Master's may get you to places that you can't get without it (and a PhD definitely can), but do you want to go to those places? If so, it's a great thing. Research tends heavily towards MSc and PhD types.
If you're planning on being a 'normal' tech geek (developer, sysadmin, web coder, etc. etc.), then the work experience is probably far more valuable. In fact, I think that most computing jobs would be better met by a technologist diploma rather than a computing degree.
It's been a while since I had to deal with PGP keys and the like, and things have multiplied since then. Is there a simple explanation for the status/compatability/equivalency of...
pgp
openpgp
gpg
gnupg
And any others I'm missing?
It always amazes me how people with severe allergies don't understand allergies.
Soy isn't an allergen, because soy isn't a product. Something in soy (probably a handful of things in fact) is an allergen. Doing a real root cause allergy test isn't practical (i.e. finding out which molecule is the allergen), which is why sensitivity tests are generally restricted to 'a food'.
Now that's one thing--and I assume you've had proper allergy tests, rather than relying on just the elimination diet. (If not, please do!) The other thing is the assumption that a soy-based toner will still have the allergen intact, or at least in a functional state. After polymerising, extracting, and generally messing with soy oil, I'd be more than a little surprised if there was anything left that could bind to the allergen receptor.
Mind you, if you don't bother with any allergen tests and just assume that the soy toner is going to affect your allergies, then you're almost certain to be right. Humans are infinitely good as convincing themselves of whatever they want, and manufacturing circumstantial evidence to back it up.
Nope. Tradition dictates that the IBM geeks who are friends with shipping and receiving there will get a chance to grab some of these for home. The rest will get crushed.